Five Things on a Friday

1.  The students on Vinalhaven Island, Maine made this amazing lobster when they read Touch Blue. As an author, it's humbling to see the incredible ways that schools and kids make my books their own. I get overwhelmed by it.

2.  Long Island, a small island in Maine with 16 students, was one of the winners in my school visit contest.  We were working out the details for that visit this week, and the teacher asked me if she could invite the teachers and children from nearby Cliff Island and Chebeague Island to take the ferry over for the day, too. I hope that works out!  It would be nice to have that shared experience together.  And it's not often that you can join three whole schools and still only have 45 kids!   

3.  My new novel is coming along.  It has crossed that line for me from "an idea" to "a book." I will have made a full pass through the entire book by the end of December, and then I'll work on deepening it all in January.  There will be lots of revising beyond that, but I'll be ready to show it to my family and my critique partners.

4.  My main character takes a series of photos in the book, and I asked my husband if he would talk me through taking each photo, so I could have the benefit of his experiences and thoughts about each one.  He said yes, so  that will be fun. 

One of the photos my main character takes involves this:

  So I ordered some this week.   

5.  One of the girls in the book group I visited in Wells asked me where I got the names for the characters in my books.  I talked about that, and then I said, "And after typing C-a-t-h-e-r-i-n-e in Rules over  and over, I made myself a promise that the main character in my next book wouldn't have a name over 5 letters! 

So Touch Blue has Tess (4), Aaron (5), Libby (5), Eben (4), Jenna (5), Grace (5). . ."   

They laughed over that. But really, if you have to type something so many times, it helps if it's short!